It is appropriate that Burdett Loomis, who once had the misfortune of spending much of a year working for Paul Simon when I was in the House, and who later headed the Bob Dole Public Policy Center at the University of Kansas, should ask for reflections on what congressional politics will look like in the next decade.

The reason it is appropriate is that the fundamental answers to our problems are less partisan than some of the headlines would suggest. I believe Bob Dole and Paul Simon, a Republican and a Democrat, could agree rather quickly on some of our problems and solutions.

I have no idea what congressional politics "will look like over the next decade," but I can tell you what it should look like.

The big deficiency is a lack of backbone. Hillary Clinton's election in New York pleased me because she has it. Bob Dole has it more than most who have served in the Senate in recent decades. We all slip occasionally, and when I have, those are my least proud moments. Bob Dole's attempts to appease the most conservative elements in his party to get the nomination were an aberration and probably cost him the election - though he might not have been nominated if he had not stretched himself to please them.

Members of the Senate and House are so frightened by the prospect of a 30-second commercial attacking them for a vote that we pass illogical and nonsensical mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crimes, taking away much of the discretion of the judges. Why? Someone might run a "soft-on-crime" commercial against us. So we end up with more of our citizens in prison per 100,000 population than any nation in the world.

Our lack of courage shows up in hundreds of ways. Anyone who looks at Social Security seriously for 15 minutes knows that we need to take some unpleasant medicine, the sooner the better. For the early years of Social Security we had 16 people working for each retiree. Today it is three, and in not too many years it will be close to two. You don't need to be an Einstein to figure out that some changes will have to be made in the retirement system, both to protect the recipients and to continue a program that gives the nation much-needed economic stability. Having millions of Americans receiving a monthly check regardless of economic turns aids all of us.

But the real answers on Social Security are not popular. Neither George W. Bush nor Albert Gore Jr. told us candidly what needs to be done. Neither political party does. It takes courage.

And the notion that you have to pander to public whims to be elected is simply not true. The public yearns for real leadership, for courage. If, for example, in the presidential debates when the capital punishment question came up, after George W. Bush gave his popular answer, Al Gore had said, "George Bush has given you a popular answer. And if you want to elect someone who will always do the popular thing, then vote for George Bush. But then you could vote for anyone walking down the street. What this election is about is leadership. I'm willing to take unpopular stands when it is in the national interest. I oppose capital punishment and here is why. . . ." I believe he would have picked up votes, and certainly would have diminished the Ralph Nader vote.

I am not simply talking theory.

When I ran for reelection to the Senate in 1990, my well-financed opponent was a popular and able congresswoman, Lynn Martin, later named secretary of labor. I had opposed capital punishment, led the opposition in the Senate to the popular but idiotic proposal to have a constitutional amendment to prohibit burning the flag (two to four people do it each year in our nation, and if we have a constitutional amendment at least that many will do it), and I said that until we balance the budget we should not talk about tax cuts, but about cutting spending or increasing taxes. In addition, I took a stand against the American Indian mascot of the University of Illinois, angering emotional alumni of that school. You can imagine the commercials that I faced. I ended up winning by almost one million votes, a bigger plurality than any seriously contested candidate in the nation for either governor or senator of either political party. In the midst of the barrage of commercials being run against me, I encountered a man on a street in Chicago who said, "I think I disagree with you on every issue, but I trust you and I'm going to vote for you."

We have developed a culture of political pandering that serves this nation poorly. Candidates can win without pandering.

I never decided an issue on the basis of a poll. I didn't take them until election time, and then I used polls to find my regional areas of strength and weakness, and which stands I had taken that would sell on TV commercials. I can't imagine Harry Truman taking a poll to decide something.

After World War II Congress faced a choice of a proposal for education benefits for veterans, later known as the GI Bill, or a cash bonus for the veterans. Fortunately the right decision was made and it enriched this nation immensely. My guess is that a poll taken among veterans would have reached a different conclusion. But a cash bonus would have been frittered away and we would not have the standard of living that we enjoy today.

After Harry Truman and George Marshall suggested the Marshall Plan, perhaps the most generous act in the history of the community of nations and certainly one of the wisest, the first poll showed 14 percent of the American public supporting it. It was overwhelmingly unpopular. But Harry Truman went ahead, and a great Republican leader, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, supported Truman in the GOP-controlled congress.

Could such a thing happen today? It is difficult to imagine.

I'm a Democrat and proud to be a Democrat. But most issues of great importance - like Social Security retirement - do not involve political philosophy. Practical men and women have to sit around a table and work things out. We have drifted toward partisan voting on the most minute things. We hurt the nation. And the public perceives that Congress is playing partisan games rather than trying to solve problems. Too often that public perception is accurate. Those are my three suggestions for the next decade. Follow those and the nation will be well served.